Notes: Unpublished letter

LENIN COLLECTION
In the archive of the Lenin Institute there is preserved a copy of 
Lenin's letter to the Swiss Social Democrat A. Schmid. The copy is 
typed in the German language. The letter contains Lenin's address: 
"W. Ulyanov, Spiegelgasse 4, c/o Kammerer, Zurich," and the date 
2107.*

LETTER TO A. SCHMID.
1 Dec. 1916. Zurich.

Dear Comrade!

Would you permit me to make one proposal?

I must confess that yesterday I insufficiently took into account one very important point in your remarks.¹ Namely, the idea that one of the peculiarities of Switzerland is its greater democracy (popular vote) and that this distinctive feature ought also to be exploited for purposes of propaganda. This idea is very important and, in my opinion, entirely correct.

Would it not be possible to apply this idea in such a way that our disagreements (which are probably very insignificant) would disappear? For example:

If we pose the question for the referendum only in this manner: for complete elimination or against?—then we shall obtain a hodgepodge of pacifist (bourgeois-pacifist, etc.) and socialist votes in favor. That is, no clarification of socialist consciousness, but only its obscuring, no application of the idea and policy of class struggle to this specific question (namely, to the question of militarism), but rather an abandonment of the class struggle viewpoint regarding the question of militarism.

But if we pose the question for the referendum in this manner: for the expropriation of large capitalist enterprises in industry and agriculture as the sole path to the complete elimination of militarism, or against expropriation?

In this case we shall be saying in our practical policy the very same thing that we all recognize theoretically, namely, that complete elimination of militarism can be conceived and carried out only in connection with the elimination of capitalism.

Consequently, the formulation should be something like this:

1) We demand the immediate expropriation of large enterprises—perhaps in the form of a direct federal property and income tax with such high, revolutionarily high rates on large fortunes that the capitalists will be practically expropriated.

2) We declare that such a socialist transformation of Switzerland is economically already now, immediately, possible, and that due to the unbearable cost of living it is urgently necessary,—and that for the political implementation of such a transformation Switzerland needs a proletarian government, not a bourgeois one; a government that rests not on the bourgeoisie but on the broad masses of wage workers and the poorest strata; and that the revolutionary mass struggle, whose beginning we observe, for instance, in Zurich mass strikes and street demonstrations and which has been recognized in the Aarau Resolution, pursues precisely this aim—to really put an end to the unbearable condition of the masses.

3) We declare that such a transformation of Switzerland will absolutely inevitably call forth imitation and the most resolute, enthusiastic support from the working class and the masses of the exploited in all civilized countries, and that only in connection with such a transformation will the complete elimination of militarism, which we strive for and which broad masses in Europe now particularly hunger for instinctively, be not an empty phrase, not a pious wish, but a truly practically feasible, politically self-evident measure.

What is your opinion on this?

Do you not believe that with such a formulation of the question (both in practical agitation, and in parliamentary speeches, and in proposals for initiative and referendum) we shall avoid the danger that the bourgeois and "socialist" pacifists might misunderstand and distort our antimilitarist slogans in such a way as to suggest that we consider the complete elimination of militarism in bourgeois Switzerland, in its imperialist surroundings, possible without socialist revolution? (which is of course an absurdity that we all unanimously reject).

With party greetings, N. Lenin.

* Evidently on November 30 a meeting of left Social Democrats took place to discuss theses; this is attested to by the Platten projects (see below). These projects are marked precisely with this date (30. XI. 1916). Lenin apparently was present at the meeting as well.